Seduced By A Scot. Julia London
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Название: Seduced By A Scot
Автор: Julia London
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Исторические любовные романы
Серия: The Highland Grooms
isbn: 9781474095983
isbn:
Nichol turned away before he gagged. He stepped out into the hall, over a block of peat, then jogged up the stairs and paused on the landing. There was only one door to his left. Sitting outside the door was a tray of food that had been covered with a cloth.
He strode down the hall and knocked firmly on that door. “Miss Darby, please do open the door. I am Mr. Nichol Bain and I’ve been sent by your benefactor, Mr. Garbett.”
Several moments passed before he heard movement. He waited for the door to open, glancing around that dark hall to perhaps identify the source of the odor he smelled up here, and was abruptly startled by the crash of what sounded like glass against the other side of the door. Had the lass just hurled something at the door?
Nichol put his hands to his hips and studied the door, thinking. He stepped forward, knocked a little more softly. “Miss Darby...lass. Mr. Garbett has sent a proposition for you that I am confident you will want to hear. He should like to see you removed from this...place as soon as possible, aye? Open the door. Please.”
Silence.
He braced his hands on either side of the door. He had not anticipated having to convince her to leave. He would think she’d come bounding out of the room, her bags packed, grateful for the opportunity to flee. “On my word, what I have to tell you is better than anything you will find here.”
He heard the scrape of something heavy against the floor and realized she was pushing something that sounded like a heavy piece of furniture against the door.
“I warned you, I did,” came the man’s voice from behind him. Nichol glanced over his shoulder. Mr. Rumpkin had come up the stairs with a bottle in one hand. He put that bottle to his lips and took a long swig before saying, “Bloody heathen, that one.”
Nichol turned back to the door and decided to try authority. “Enough of this, Miss Darby, aye? Your benefactor is quite eager to arrive at a solution for you, and what he proposes will surely satisfy you. But you must open the door to hear it.”
Silence.
Nichol was feeling his patience leak from him, and he never lost his patience. He tried the door, but as he suspected, it was bolted shut. He slammed his hand against it in an uncharacteristic display of frustration. “Miss Darby, I must insist you come out at once!” he said sternly.
He heard something and pressed his ear to the door. Was he imagining it, or did he hear a low laugh from the other side of that door?
He definitely heard another chuckle behind him.
Patience deserted Nichol altogether. He prided himself on his ability to stay completely calm when others were at sixes and sevens—it was necessary to the sort of work that he did. But this annoyed him. He could feel the uptick of his heartbeat, the surge of heat to his neck. He would not be treated in this way by a young woman with nothing to recommend her, with no one to help her but him. He would not accept her bad manners in light of what he meant to do for her. He whirled away from the door.
Mr. Rumpkin was still standing there, still drinking. He dragged his sleeve across his mouth and said, “Told you.”
Nichol squeezed around him, then strode down the stairs.
He had also learned in his many years of solving problems that if one avenue for resolution closed, there was always another. The trick was to find it.
And oh, he would find it.
MAURA BRACED HER hands against the door and leaned in, pressing her ear against the rough wood, listening to footsteps receding.
When she couldn’t hear them any longer, she pushed away from the door and smiled wryly to herself. How dare Mr. Garbett send someone for her? How dare he not come himself to deliver his apology? Did he truly believe she would simply walk out of this spot of hell with a stranger? Go meekly along after all that had happened? Not without an apology, she would not, and she felt quite determined to never leave this room until she had it.
Except that she was even more determined to leave this wretched place, just as soon as she figured out how. She would not remain one night longer under Mr. David Rumpkin’s roof than was absolutely necessary.
Oh, how she despised that man! At first, she’d tried to make the best of it, and though she could hardly stomach her surroundings, she’d tried to be pleasing and accommodating. Just as she’d tried when she’d been taken in by the Garbetts.
On his deathbed, her father had told her to always be kind, to be grateful to the family that would take her in, to be as accommodating as he knew she could be. He’d reminded her that she had no standing in this world, and her existence depended on the benevolence of a man who was not her father. Maura had tried to be all of the things her father had recommended, but she was not their kin, and Mrs. Garbett had hated her from the moment she’d laid eyes on her. Mr. Garbett had been indifferent to her for the most part, even though from time to time he would defend her. Still, Maura had always believed Mr. Garbett liked her. Now she believed he had been precisely what he’d shown her: indifferent.
Given her experience in Stirling, perhaps she should have known that being grateful and accommodating would not serve her here, either. Rumpkin had shown himself almost at once to be an impossible, slovenly beast with no regard for her or that hapless lass who came from Aberuthen to cook his stews.
Still, she might have born it. She’d even had thoughts of tidying up the house a bit for him, as she was reluctant to sit on any seat. But it was Rumpkin’s drunken pawing of her that had prompted her to barricade herself in the room. She’d been caught completely off guard by it—he’d come up behind her, had put one hand on her arse, another on her breast and his greasy mouth on her neck.
A shudder ran through her as she recalled it.
Maura had found a strength she had not known she possessed in that moment. She had shoved the mountain of a man with all her might, and he’d stumbled backward, falling into his chair. “Donna be a shrew,” he’d slurred, and as he’d tried to lever himself to his feet she had fled to her room at the top of the stairs, had bolted the door shut, then had pushed a bureau in front of it for good measure.
The next day she’d had to remove the bureau to accept the bit of food the lass had brought her and left outside her door. She’d taken the bread, had left the bowl of stringy stew untouched.
Oh right, she’d almost forgotten—she was starving just now.
Maura turned away from the door and looked at her prison. She had a small stack of books that were keeping her occupied, but which she’d soon finish. She was running out of wood for the hearth, her clothes needed washing and she’d lost all manner of decency. The clothes she’d been wearing the night he’d put his hands on her were discarded onto the floor, where they would remain, unless she resorted to burning them for warmth. She hadn’t bothered to dress her hair or don a gown over her stomacher and petticoat in days.
She fell onto the chaise longue at the end of the bed, and stared morosely at the ceiling with its peeling paint. She couldn’t survive in here much СКАЧАТЬ